


Turning

by Gambitgirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:30:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gambitgirl/pseuds/Gambitgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel raised and healed the righteous man, time to call in the favor when the angel gets hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turning

**Author's Note:**

> First SPN fanfic, first one on this site, but I plan to add more. No smut in this one, so apologies in advance XD. Will smut at later dates in other fics. This is based off an RP one of my besties: Cas crash landed in the parking lot of Dean's usually crappy hotel beaten all the hell up by other angels because...well the laundry list of things Castiel's done to piss off the Brethren takes up 4 seasons of the show. Most of my awesome writing ideas come from the stories we cook up in RP. Ignore any typos, Angel of the Lord commands it

Although he'd inhabited this human vessel off and, more frequently, on for nearly 5 years the few occasions when Castiel had felt...or more accurately been forced...to endure it's mortal limitations were always startling. He'd spent, endured, eons as an immaterial being of celestial intent, and seen so many wonders. 

Now Castiel experienced things much less wondrous but infinitely visceral, and therefore more unpleasant, within the confines of this form.

It wasn't possession, more an...occupation. Like he'd taken up residence in someone else's house. Even though he was long gone the previous occupant's presence hung over everything that was Castiel on Earth. Everything of this vessel was his to shift and move about, to pick up and discard. None of it was truly his.

Sometimes Castiel felt guilty that he treated Jimmy Novak's body in same careless manner Sam and Dean treated the innumerable shabby motel rooms they occupied on their journeys. Leaving smoke and blood and wrecked bits in his wake.

Jimmy was...had been a devout man; he'd put his faith in Castiel and given himself over to the angel entirely as he felt his own life slipping away, more than ready to let go of the tail of the comet that had wracked his body for the two long years they'd shared this form. Jimmy made Castiel promise to save his family and, in return, he'd surrendered his body, utterly and completely, to the angel so God's Warrior could walk among men unencumbered.

And Castiel had protected and hidden Jimmy Novak's family. Banished those who threatened the ones dearest to the simple man who'd sold advertisements for his local AM radio station and been content with that. Who'd lived a humble and devout life and found himself a walking meatsuit for an Angel of the Lord for his efforts.

And in repayment for Jimmy Novak's sacrifice and lasting gift Castiel did not just walk among men. He strode through the vast congregation of humanity, waded through the battalions of Heaven and Hell alike while wearing Jimmy's face, his lean frame, his shocking blue eyes that disarmed so many mortals and otherworldly beings, alike, with his frank and piercing gaze.

Castiel was now starting to, if not appreciate, at least acknowledge the frailty of humans from this new perspective. Yes, he'd seen innumerable, vast, incalculable numbers die before his eyes, and infinitely more who suffered under his previously removed gaze. He'd tended to the dying with the un-felt touch of his Grace to their frames just before they passed into his Father's Kingdom, he'd whispered silent assurances there was a reward for them in the Hereafter.

Twice he'd been allowed the Gift of ushering the departed to their Reward, watched silent and still, as they glided towards their personal Heavens, ones forever out of touch to all angels. 

In those infinitely rare moments Castiel almost glimpsed what Glory awaited souls After. The barest flicker was all he and his Brethren were ever allowed. 

A reward to Mankind for suffering in their eggshell delicate husks on Earth, beset on all sides by disappointment, frustration, pain, and want for the short span of their lives. That was his Father's Gift to humans, his favorites. 

In this vessel Castiel experienced what he supposed was mortal vulnerability one more than one occasion, when his Grace was drained or his vessel damaged. Then he was forced to feel the grinding, hollow, unceasing pain of his form, acknowledge its limits and and the dragging certainty that he was unable to exceed them.

But it wasn't until he'd battled Baldriel that he finally, keenly, felt the exposure that was knowing one's own mortality, this dancing on the razor's edge of existence upon feet that were cut raw with every breath dragged through his nearly mortal frame.

He hurt. So much. The gash of his brother's holy blade into his side could not be ignored, but it was easily pushed to the back of Castiel's consciousness at the fresh wrench of this body when his Brethren attempted to tears his wings from him and nearly succeeded.

Although his agony was angelic in origin the shudders that now wracked his frame were as far from divine as possible. 

How could humans withstand so much pain and still continue? Not just the bone deep burn and dig of physical injuries, but the never-ending ache of existing in this world? Of being so small? Of having all that you are, all your sense and consciousness and memory and thought and aspiration and pounding desire and relentless need and unflincing agaony all so tightly confined in this incredibly thin membrane? 

Castiel felt like his skin was near to bursting at every moment, just trying to comprehend what it must be like to live such a frenzied and short existence in just this one small, easily breakable thing.

And no great Reward waited for him at the end of it.

He'd lain in that squalid motel room for days, trying and failing to heal himself, his Grace as sundered as his wings. Neither fully angelic nor human Castiel had ridden swelling waves of anguish until every breath, every blink, every dull thready thud of his vessel's heart did nothing but remind him he'd survived another moment of misery only to have to do it all over again with the next wracked inhalation and dry swallow of his parched throat.

And Dean had been there, watching, bringing him water, talking to him to keep him distracted from the blood that spotted his lip when he coughed, the hunter perpetually confident Castiel's "mojo" would fix the angel up in short order. Castiel hadn't the energy or the desire to inform Dean of the gravity of the situation, as there was nothing the hunter could do to stop it. Castiel would languish in this state until his vessel could not longer stand the physical strain of his otherworldly injuries, of his body...yes his, it was more than vessel, he could not deny it now... never aging but also never healing, and he would cease. 

When Sam had found the rite, incalculably ancient and long thought lost, Castiel had seized upon it with near desperation. It wasn't until then Dean realized the angel had hidden the truly grievous nature of his injuries from him, and to say he was pissed was an understatement. Castiel didn't have the energy to care, not much anyway, not more than he usually cared about Dean's opinion which was quite a lot. He had to hoard what little will he had left to not collapse on the floor and cough his vessel's lungs out.

If the rite didn't work maybe it would at least hasten Castiel's end, so then the pain would stop. He nearly prayed for it, but he couldn't bring himself willingly to beg his absent Father to sever him from Dean...or Sam, really. So he grabbed onto the fevered hope of the rite like a drowning man to a unfamiliar hand reaching to pluck him from vicious tides. Even if the price was drawing forth tears from the last True Innocent in the world and invoking Enochian so old the syllables crumbled like dust in his mouth, Castiel hoped...and felt like he sinned to covet his own existence so much. 

Dean didn't have any clue the whole import of performing the rite, the mending of the Grace of the being who had raised and repaired him and made him whole again. The circle that would close around him and the angel. He freely let his own blood mix with tears Castiel had wrung from the True Innocent with blunt, but effective, manipulations, speaking the words with Castiel then annointing the broken angel with the hands of the Righteous Man. Castiel almost shuddered from the first touch, then leaned into it, and knew he craved, desired desperately to stay here.

Castiel felt like a monster for wanting so badly. He didn't deserve to, not after the things he'd done, but he couldn't help it. He had been stripped bare of all his arrogance and angelic assurance and now only wanted to cling to life.

To that which he was now finally experiencing in this mangled and wracked mortal form, nothing in all his divine existence had ever prepared him for how much his needed to continue to live in a world where Jimmy Novak had willingly given himself over to the Divine for love of a mortal woman and their child; a world where the Righteous Man burned a holy text and rubbed the ashes into his palms to save a broken angel who'd let him down more often than stood with him against the Hordes; a world that, despite being full of despair and violence and pain, was inhabited by beings who soldiered on through their moth-delicate lives driven by souls more achingly beautiful than all the Hosannahs of the Host.

Castiel just couldn't bring himself to part with this world and was shamed by his covetousness of it, but he couldn't help it. He'd been down here too long, had allowed earthly things to lure him in.

Dean performed the rite with not a little self-conscious discomfort and some offhand remarks that quickly faded to serious determination when the angel rasped out an embarrassingly plaintive request between coughs to Annoint his damaged vessel where his injuries were most severe, where his back was blackened from the injuries inflicted by his Brethren.

Dean did poor job of hiding his shock when Castiel's wings emerged onto this material plane at the touch of the divine balm. They manifested as damaged, spindly deformations at first, then slowly shifted and filled in as the hunter worked the holy tear stained oil over Castiel's limbs, and the angel shuddered under his ministrations in pain and mortification to be seen in such a state. Dean cursed in surprise at the sight of Catiel's wings, discomfitted, amused, possibly disgusted by their appearance.

Castiel struggled to explain to him, between panted breaths and bitten off groans, his wings looked that way because Dean thought they did. They appeared as they were perceived, no other human had ever seen them and it wasn't his fault Dean made them look like ratty bony things at first, then some sort of muddy brown hawk-like configuration that ruffled Castiel's self-confidence further. Dean brushed that off and called him "Feathers." Castiel never liked that nickname but he more than tolerated it as Dean's slid annonited hands over his back to reset a broken span, spread balm over a tattered membrane to mend it, relocate a damaged wing joint.

Castiel made an embarrassingly loud bark of exultant relief when the last joint snapped into place and he was whole again.

Castiel's relief at the cessation of his pain and the flicker of his Grace returning to him was quickly overwhelmed by his shame at winding up in this situation in the first place, then mortified it had to be Dean to see him in such a sorry state and have to touch him. Dean had a very a definite idea about personal space and this was a clear violation of it. 

Castiel reminded himself he was supposed to be watching over Dean, not the other way around. Some guardian angel he turned out to be if he was constantly relying on his Charge to extricate him from his continued misfortunes.

His head cleared of pain, Castiel quickly stamped down his own embarrassment with a flare of familiar angelic confidence, gilding over his own failings with the smug armor of self-righteousness. The rite completed, Castiel wanted to re-align himself and Dean back to their proper positions. Remind Dean he was an Angel of the Lord, even if he wasn't a perfect one, and the human should respect that and not pity him. A little awe wouldn't go far afield either. That whatever equalization in their stations that had occurred when Castiel lay near death in that hotel room, and the pathetic way he'd groaned when Dean healed him, was over. Castiel needed something to mollify his horribly humbled pride.

He yanked Dean out into the parking lot, he needed space for this, and anointed his Charge's eyes brusquely with the last of the holy oil, righteous blood, and innocent tears that had been sanctified by the eons old prayer. He commanded Dean to see him in all his glory and unfurled his wings to their full span, healed and dazzling to behold.

When Dean blinked and jerked back Castiel flexed them with no small amount of pride until Dean said, "Heh, feathers." Castiel looked over his shoulder and sighed in irritation. He looked like a fluffy white swan. It was extremely vexing.

"Nrgh. They look like that because you THINK that's how they should look. This isn't funny, Dean. I'm not a bird!" He huffed, which only made Dean grin wider because the angel certainly looked like an angry pissed off cockatoo at the moment.

Castiel sealed his hand over his Mark on Dean's shoulder, silently reminding him who exactly fought the Legion of Hell and rescued his disrespectful ass from eternal flames.

"Dean, forget about birds for one minute!" Castiel demanded gruffly, which only served to make Dean grin in amusement once more. Castiel amended in a calmer, more serious voice, "You'll only be able to see this once, there's nothing left of the Anointing after this...so, please, I want you to LOOK at me." When Dean nodded Castiel drew a breath he no longer needed and drew his wings forth again.

The stunned expression on Dean's face and the way he almost fell over, had it not been for Castiel's rough hand holding him in place, was gratifying to the angel. Now Dean had a realistic idea exactly who he'd been jibing and teasing and watching writhe on the floor in agony. He'd hopefully show a bit more respect...and the angel could pretend he didn't feel extremely self-conscious.

"Wow," Dean mouthed silently, eyes huge and staring over Castiel's shoulders and far above his head. Out of idle curiosity, Castiel turned his head to look at his wings...and blinked. He looked back at Dean, stunned at the sheer wonder on his Charge's expression. "That's how you see them?"

Dean nodded, unblinking, head tilted back to continue staring, and breathed, "Cas...they're amazing."

This is how Dean saw them?

Saw Castiel?

The angel looked back over his shoulder again and his eyes blurred at the most imaginative and perfect manifestation of Grace he'd ever witnessed. Even Michael's wings, all 6 of them, had never made his eyes water like this.

Rippling currents of celestial energy, of the very Life Force of Everything swooped up and out, the facets of Creation itself coalescing and reforming into faces, landscapes, and spinning galaxies until it was difficult for even the angel to process what his vessel's eyes witnessed. 

Dean finally blinked and looked at Castiel. His was grin huge and spreading, dimpling his cheeks, and contagious as Castiel's own lips curled back over his vessel's white teeth in his own slight smile.

"Dude....that's...you're fucking awesome," Dean whooped with a laugh.

Dean saw him that way, so he was. He manifested as perceived, and the Righteous Man, with his usual casual insouciance, had re-made Castiel once more. 

The angel didn't feel any shame this time.


End file.
